The
following report will summarize Vi Andersen's experiences at the Parallel and Side Events
at the UN CSW58:
Monday,
March 10, 2014 Opening
Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon of the United Nations addressed the Commission on the Status of Women. His
message encompassed gender equality, empowerment of women and leadership as
forefront measures of our work in the 21st century. Huge gaps remain
for marginalized groups throughout the world in inadequate sanitation, child
mortality and acts of violence against women and girls. Following the Beijing
Platform for Action, there is only now less than two years left to “champion
all rights of women and girls”.
Phumzile
Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Under Secretary / Executive Director of UN Women, also
defined how “equality for women is progress for all”. Although progress remains
slow, we also see a lack of progress in our countries, especially in rural and
indigenous areas. She reminded us that “Today will be better than yesterday;
tomorrow will be better than today.”
NGO
Regional Caucuses: North America/Europe
The defining of
terminology on the key elements of the Draft Agreed Conclusions for the 58th
Session of the United Nations Commission for the recommitment of governments to
the Beijing Platform, other agreements and conventions ensued. Susan O’Malley,
International Federation of Business and Professional Women, and Jeanne
Sarson, International Federation of
University Women, and Pierette Pape lead the discussion and addressed concerns
raised by NGOs attending. The NA/EUR revisions were posted and ongoing
revisions made. Over the week, violence was added to the document as one of the
areas of high concern to further define the acts against women as violent aggression
against women to give law makers further clout in enacting laws against perpetrators
of these acts.
Side Event: Lessons
Learned in Country: How to End Child, Early and Forced Marriage hosted by Canada, Malawi, Zambia, PLAN International. Kelly Leitch,
Minister responsible for the Status of Women Canada, spoke on the negative
impact of the early and forced marriages of young women and heralded Canada’s
efforts to be a driving force in changes in countries like Malawi and Zambia concerning
these issues. Canada has given $5.5 million in aid to assist in the efforts to
overcome early and forced marriages in these countries. A young fifteen year old
speaker from Malawi described her friend’s termination of school at the age of
9 to be married to a twenty-one year old man. She stated it was a forced
disempowerment of all her rights, of her own body, education and future. Her friend was forced to
bear children before her body had matured well enough to do so. This practice
often leads to maternal or child mortality. It was fundamentally an issue of
children having children. Through education and group empowerment provided by
aid funds, families can realize alternative ways to overcome low income
disparities in their countries other than with dowries to combat poverty.
Canada and PLAN International are working on the ground in Malawi and Zambia to
affect change.
Thursday,
March 13, 2014
International
Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Briefing: Women and
Water and Female Genital Mutilation were key issues that IFBPW would carry
forward from this session.
Side
Event: Permanent Mission of Zambia to
the UN and Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health: Putting Women and
Girls at the Center of the Development Agenda: Sexual and Reproductive Health
and Rights and Achieving Sustainable Development
Rural and middle
income females on average are married by the age of eighteen but many pre-teen
girls are also married. All girls of reproductive & prereproductive age are
facing reproduction, abortion, high mortality rates and HIV and sexually
transmitted infections especially between ages of fifteen and nineteen.
Questions remains…”Why are these issues so difficult to articulate? At what age
do we provide education on reproduction and sexual rights?”
Zambian speaker,
Chibaula sounded hopeful with her statement, “every woman, every child road
map” will set the course for staff and training, access to family planning,
health plans and a campaign to end marriage before appropriate sexual age. Post
2015 roadmap plans are to be implemented within legal framework. “Women are a
valuable asset to Sustainable Development Goals and therefore, at the top of
the agenda…”gender equality is to be mainstreamed”.
Parallel
Event: Is Prostitution Sex Work? When Terminology and Legalization Collide with
Human Rights!
Executive
Director of the Coalition of Trafficking Intervention
“Little girls do not
daydream about being prostituted when they grow up!” A coalition of women who
had been engaged in prostitution shared their stories of the time when they
were introduced to it. Stories varied from getting income from stripping to go
to college, to being coerced as young children or being given by their families
to the johns as young adolescents.
Prostitution rings have increased in number since 1990 due to an ever
increasing male demand. It constitutes
the rise in human trafficking from eastern countries, indigenous communities
and cities globally. The terminology, both street and legal, used is
detrimental to the overall realization that it is not work….prostitution is not
sex “work”. This linguistic twist has everything to do with harm to women and
girls. These women deal with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), sexually
transmitted diseases and illness similar to post war Afghanistan veteran cases.
Bottom line is that the linguistics is confusing and conveys prostitutes as
workers conveyed in laws which reflect that disparity. Therefore, the Nordic
Model and Minnesota Safe Harbour Law are viable approaches that provide exit
strategies for the women and girls, structure for the mechanisms in which law
can be tailored to assist women and girls caught in the rings of prostitution
and support to the women and girls as they transition. Language that shows that
prostitution is a “crime of victimization” is key to making changes in
mainstream thinking and laws.
Parallel
Event: Silent Survivors: Using Theatre to Break the Silence
Ping Chong + Company
Baha’is of the United States (Natural Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the
U.S.), Values Caucus
Ping Chong + Company
sponsored by Baha’is of US use the median of theatre to facilitate the process
of recovery from trauma as survivors of sexual abuse during childhood. In a film
survivors narrate their stories and play out a circle drama. The effectiveness
of using theatre and drama as the medians of this work is positive and provides
a venue for safety, trust and healing through therapy to happen.
Overall, the sessions
I attended were reinforcing the messages that I had already experienced in my
training through Women’s Studies, experience working in some of these areas
such as HIV, Women’s Shelters and work with youth at risk. Each session
provided a broader and more comprehensive view of the efforts that are needed
to move towards equality, and empowerment of women to achieve the Millennium
Development Goals and to move into having Sustainable Development Goals
worldwide. It would be a very powerful experience to be able to attend in 2015
twenty years after the Beijing Platform for Action.
Photos from the Fair, Held Friday morning
-- Vi Andersen
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